I have never been one to covet those four
little white stitches. But today I bought a Da Da sculpture. A jumper: Maison
Martin Margiela for H&M. Acrylic football scarves sliced in half then sewn
back together. You can see no team names and the team colours clash in a
non-logical progression of gaudy stripes. I have never supported a football
team. I know a lot of good can come from it but a football scarf remains a symbol
of division for me rather than pride: something that entices the rival gang to
get riled, a beer breath burb that carries on the breeze a whiff of the threat
of violence. Shouting...
Lager lager lager. Shouting… Mega mega white thing. Well now all the teams are
a fruit salad. Democratic Da Da jumper of anti hate how fetching you look with
my new bobble hat. Margiela for all! Art for all! Love
for all! No longer need you be rich nor knowing nor elitist nor inserted up
your own backside, because now we are all the same. There are no team names or
team colours we can all play. Like the well intentioned ‘help’ in a bourgeoise household
who thought those bastard four white tacs were supposed to be removed, I’m
going to take my scissors and snip away at any four little white threads that
remain. Rip out your labels and tie your paintings to lamp posts and wear your
MMM H&M jumper to the Cabaret Voltaire!
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Thursday, 16 February 2012
AWOL
I have been so bad at updating here. I have so many shoots coming out I can't wait to showwwww...
A peek for now of beautiful Billie and Dudley <3 <3 <3
A peek for now of beautiful Billie and Dudley <3 <3 <3
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Coming tonight!
Gay Witches for Vice!
Photography: Masha Mel
Styling: John William
Hair and Make Up: Bea Sweet
Styling Assistance: Romina Fernandez
Photography: Masha Mel
Styling: John William
Hair and Make Up: Bea Sweet
Styling Assistance: Romina Fernandez
Kansas Dolls
I shot this story like 6 months ago! It only recently came out but I really love it a lot. First Buffalo gal go 'round the outside...
Photography: Hayley Louisa Brown
Styling: John William
Make Up: Bea Sweet
Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita
Models: William Potter @ Elite, Raymond @ M&P, Heidi @ Premier and Georgia @ Storm
Styling assistance: Romina Fernandez
Photography: Hayley Louisa Brown
Styling: John William
Make Up: Bea Sweet
Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita
Models: William Potter @ Elite, Raymond @ M&P, Heidi @ Premier and Georgia @ Storm
Styling assistance: Romina Fernandez
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Crybaby
Photography: Jeff Hahn
Styling: John William
Hair and Make Up: Bea Sweet
Model: Gabriel @ FM
Peek from Jeff and I's coming soon editorial for ones2watch...
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
After Tretchikoff...
Stylist John William and photographer Holly Falconer’s first editorial for Let Them Eat Cake is a colourful exploration of ethnicity in fashion and the cultural legacy of Vladimir Tretchikoff. They were keen to talk me through their concept before publication. And as I’m always ready to talk big ideas, visual minutiae and the eccentric print-buying habits of the Great British Housewife, I let them. It begins in the middle, like all great conversations…
JW: … I love Tretchikoff’s paintings because he comes from a very naïve place, because he’s just painting what he finds beautiful in a way that he finds beautiful. I feel that when I use African iconography in my work it’s in the same spirit: it comes from a place of love and inspiration.
HF: Really? Because when I look at what you do it seems so much more sophisticated than anything by Tretchikoff. You learn a lot more about the models, it’s more layered…
JW: I think that’s because this is 2011. In the way you shoot people and the way I style them, there’s a lack of polish; we like reality. With Tretchikoff there’s absolutely no lack of polish in his execution but there is in the way he presents non-white identity.
HF: We began by imagining his paintings hanging in middleclass living rooms across Britain in the sixties. The first layer of this project was to bring in an acknowledgement that isn’t present in Tretchikoff’s painting, a really emphatic acknowledgment that we’re coming at African culture from a very British place, hence the use of wallpaper. With its design, we were also drawing on Ndebele house painting, a type of South African art that became really popular in the late nineteenth century when the Ndebele people lost a war against white Boer farmers. To the Boers they just looked like patterns, but they allowed communities to communicate without outsiders realizing it. In the portraits I’ve made you’ve got a mixture of standard Tretchikoff poses – some of which are highly sexualized, others of which are thoughtful or smiling – mixed in with something quite real about the models, something that I caught in the moment. Similarly, in the balance between kitsch wallpaper and Ndebele house painting, there’s both an acknowledgement of something Western with something secret behind it.”
JW: With the styling, the makeup and the lighting on top of all that, it was meant to be quite obvious that me, as the stylist, and Bea, as the make up artist, that we are taking these two real people, Harry and Sienna, and we’re literally putting on them our version of the story. Tretchikoff created his own version of exoticness and otherness; we were doing that too but in a way that was obvious.
HF: It’s beyond cliché; we’re doing something interesting with it.
JW: In many ways for me this story is part of an ongoing life project. I use a lot of African iconography in my work as a stylist; African style is something I find very inspiring. I’m not scared of using non-white models and piecing together stories using non-white iconography. I see it as something important, something that I should be doing. Engaging with cliché can be powerful provided you’re using it for a reason. The problem arises when you have a rich fashion magazine engaging with black stereotypes and it doesn’t seem to be doing so for any reason at all: “Oh, Lanvin’s brought out some new tribal-esque jewellery, let’s shoot it on black models.” I want to engage with my model on a personal level. I want to tell a story and put something of the model into the work. That makes it important to engage with different cultures, whether we’re talking ethnicity or something else.
HF: This shoot was really important for me in terms of models. I find it disturbing that so many agencies have such a small number of black models.
JW: People, regardless of their background or skin colour, shouldn’t feel scared to explore other cultures beyond their experience so long as they engage, and so long as they have a reason. That seems okay to me because the only way people can learn is by being curious. What I want to see in fashion is more thought - that’s across fashion and styling and photography as a whole. All too often what you’ll see is a black girl arrive at a shoot and the stylist immediately says “let’s do a bright orange lip”. Of course, they can do that but I want them to understand why they’re doing it. With these images, and images I create in general, I’m not saying I have any answers, just lots of questions. I want people to ask questions. I’m curious and I want other people to be curious too. I just want people to talk about and think about these things.
HF: Absolutely. Tretchikoff’s paintings represent what can happen when you can go too far with embracing stereotypes. The poses in his paintings and the ideas expressed by them are very, very colonial. And that’s something that fashion can sometimes be, one of the last bastions of colonialism.
JW: When you see Vogue shooting yet another skinny white girl jumping up and down with Masai tribesmen wearing Alexander McQueen, it’s not right. They haven’t engaged with any respect or curiosity. It’s not about exploration but exploitation. Yes, it’s okay to occasionally cross the line and make mistakes but you should know you’re doing it and do so with respect. A skinny white girl surrounded by non-white people… Vogue have been doing that same shoot once a year forever!
HF: The point is that that’s not what’s great and what’s exciting about England and Britain today. What’s exciting is the last forty years when we learnt to embrace other cultures instead of fetishising them. It’s what Edward Said said in Orientalism: it’s not just about prettifying other cultures to make them distant and safe. With this shoot we’ve tried to show a bit of tension: in the wallpaper and in the models, posed generically sometimes and at other times being themselves. It’s almost like the people and the cultures depicted in Tretchikoff’s paintings are fighting back years later.
See the full shoot here.
WORDS ASHLEY MAURITZEN
Photography: Holly Falconer
Styling: John William
Hair and make Up: Bea Sweet
Models: Sienna @ FM and Harry @ M&P
JW: … I love Tretchikoff’s paintings because he comes from a very naïve place, because he’s just painting what he finds beautiful in a way that he finds beautiful. I feel that when I use African iconography in my work it’s in the same spirit: it comes from a place of love and inspiration.
HF: Really? Because when I look at what you do it seems so much more sophisticated than anything by Tretchikoff. You learn a lot more about the models, it’s more layered…
JW: I think that’s because this is 2011. In the way you shoot people and the way I style them, there’s a lack of polish; we like reality. With Tretchikoff there’s absolutely no lack of polish in his execution but there is in the way he presents non-white identity.
HF: We began by imagining his paintings hanging in middleclass living rooms across Britain in the sixties. The first layer of this project was to bring in an acknowledgement that isn’t present in Tretchikoff’s painting, a really emphatic acknowledgment that we’re coming at African culture from a very British place, hence the use of wallpaper. With its design, we were also drawing on Ndebele house painting, a type of South African art that became really popular in the late nineteenth century when the Ndebele people lost a war against white Boer farmers. To the Boers they just looked like patterns, but they allowed communities to communicate without outsiders realizing it. In the portraits I’ve made you’ve got a mixture of standard Tretchikoff poses – some of which are highly sexualized, others of which are thoughtful or smiling – mixed in with something quite real about the models, something that I caught in the moment. Similarly, in the balance between kitsch wallpaper and Ndebele house painting, there’s both an acknowledgement of something Western with something secret behind it.”
JW: With the styling, the makeup and the lighting on top of all that, it was meant to be quite obvious that me, as the stylist, and Bea, as the make up artist, that we are taking these two real people, Harry and Sienna, and we’re literally putting on them our version of the story. Tretchikoff created his own version of exoticness and otherness; we were doing that too but in a way that was obvious.
HF: It’s beyond cliché; we’re doing something interesting with it.
JW: In many ways for me this story is part of an ongoing life project. I use a lot of African iconography in my work as a stylist; African style is something I find very inspiring. I’m not scared of using non-white models and piecing together stories using non-white iconography. I see it as something important, something that I should be doing. Engaging with cliché can be powerful provided you’re using it for a reason. The problem arises when you have a rich fashion magazine engaging with black stereotypes and it doesn’t seem to be doing so for any reason at all: “Oh, Lanvin’s brought out some new tribal-esque jewellery, let’s shoot it on black models.” I want to engage with my model on a personal level. I want to tell a story and put something of the model into the work. That makes it important to engage with different cultures, whether we’re talking ethnicity or something else.
HF: This shoot was really important for me in terms of models. I find it disturbing that so many agencies have such a small number of black models.
JW: People, regardless of their background or skin colour, shouldn’t feel scared to explore other cultures beyond their experience so long as they engage, and so long as they have a reason. That seems okay to me because the only way people can learn is by being curious. What I want to see in fashion is more thought - that’s across fashion and styling and photography as a whole. All too often what you’ll see is a black girl arrive at a shoot and the stylist immediately says “let’s do a bright orange lip”. Of course, they can do that but I want them to understand why they’re doing it. With these images, and images I create in general, I’m not saying I have any answers, just lots of questions. I want people to ask questions. I’m curious and I want other people to be curious too. I just want people to talk about and think about these things.
HF: Absolutely. Tretchikoff’s paintings represent what can happen when you can go too far with embracing stereotypes. The poses in his paintings and the ideas expressed by them are very, very colonial. And that’s something that fashion can sometimes be, one of the last bastions of colonialism.
JW: When you see Vogue shooting yet another skinny white girl jumping up and down with Masai tribesmen wearing Alexander McQueen, it’s not right. They haven’t engaged with any respect or curiosity. It’s not about exploration but exploitation. Yes, it’s okay to occasionally cross the line and make mistakes but you should know you’re doing it and do so with respect. A skinny white girl surrounded by non-white people… Vogue have been doing that same shoot once a year forever!
HF: The point is that that’s not what’s great and what’s exciting about England and Britain today. What’s exciting is the last forty years when we learnt to embrace other cultures instead of fetishising them. It’s what Edward Said said in Orientalism: it’s not just about prettifying other cultures to make them distant and safe. With this shoot we’ve tried to show a bit of tension: in the wallpaper and in the models, posed generically sometimes and at other times being themselves. It’s almost like the people and the cultures depicted in Tretchikoff’s paintings are fighting back years later.
See the full shoot here.
WORDS ASHLEY MAURITZEN
Photography: Holly Falconer
Styling: John William
Hair and make Up: Bea Sweet
Models: Sienna @ FM and Harry @ M&P
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Grit Boys
Two of the covers of the AW issue of Grit "Kansas Dolls"!
Photography: Harley Weir
Styling: John William
Grooming: Bea Sweet
Assistance: Romina Fernández
Models: Yuri Pleskun @ Elite and Angus Whitehead @ Select
Pra Pra Ra Ra
Wearing a satin boob tube
I stole my sister's boyfriend
I packed a ra-ra skirt into a nylon backpack
It was all whirlwind heat and flash
In my flame print frock and bedazzled belt
We killed my parents and hit the road
I stole my sister's boyfriend
I packed a ra-ra skirt into a nylon backpack
It was all whirlwind heat and flash
In my flame print frock and bedazzled belt
We killed my parents and hit the road
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Comme Des Tampons
Toilet Doily Frilly Tampax-
Cotton Wooly Little Bunny-
Frou Frou Boo Boo-
Stronger-Soaker-Hoo-Hoo/
That's Cricket.
Comme Des Tampons
Cotton Wooly Little Bunny-
Frou Frou Boo Boo-
Stronger-Soaker-Hoo-Hoo/
That's Cricket.
Comme Des Tampons
Hi-de-Hi Dolce and Bananas
Hi-de-Hi
Su Pollard
Gems as big as
Yer bollards
You are so fashion-
Forward
Su Pollard
Gems as big as
Yer bollards
You are so fashion-
Forward
Monday, 31 October 2011
CHRIZZY KANE (with a Jil Sander twist)
Oh those/
holographic pansy stickers/
that make a really satisfying "zika-zika"/
squeak squeak/
when you scratch them/
like the bumbag/
you took on holiday/
1997 innit.
Chrizzy Kane babes/
With a Jil Sander twist.
holographic pansy stickers/
that make a really satisfying "zika-zika"/
squeak squeak/
when you scratch them/
like the bumbag/
you took on holiday/
1997 innit.
Chrizzy Kane babes/
With a Jil Sander twist.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Carnaby Catwalk
So a few weeks ago I styled a catwalk show for Carbaby Street... My best creep Alex took some pictures (in the gifs!)
So glad my fave babes Fifi and Earl turned up <3
So glad my fave babes Fifi and Earl turned up <3
Friday, 2 September 2011
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